The present invention relates to an RNA microarray for detecting Pre-miRNA interacting with a protein.
An RNA-protein (RNP) interaction is a major control factor in gene expression. It has been reported that a specific RNP interaction determines a cell fate and a disease (Non Patent Literature 1).
For example, Lin28A protein binds to a Pre-let7 miRNA at two sites, i.e., two loop regions of a loop-stem-loop structure (Non Patent Literature 2). Likewise, RNA having a chain length of 10 bases or more has a self-folding property for a three-dimensional structure, which is more complicated than DNA. In most cases, RNA having such a structure is inevitably required for specific interaction with a protein.
Owing to recent RNA-protein interaction analysis, studies for identifying a sequence having high binding-affinity to a known RNA-binding protein from random sequences having about 7 to 9 bases have been globally conducted; however, it was confirmed that the proteins which bind to these short RNA sequences are mostly housekeeping genes and rarely have a property of resulting in a specific response (Non Patent Literature 3). Large-scale analysis for elucidating the interactions between the RNA sequence, which has a structure formed of 10 bases or more and potentially serves as a cell fate control factor, and a protein, has not yet been performed.